was a tank fielded by Germany in World War II that served from mid-1943 to the end of the European war in 1945. It was intended as a counter to the T-34, and to replace the Panzer III and IV, though it served along with them as well as the heavier Tiger tanks until the end of the war. The Panther’s excellent combination of firepower, mobility, and protection served as a benchmark for other nations’ late war and immediate post-war tank designs and it is frequently regarded as one of the best tank designs of World War II.

Until 1944, it was designated as the Panzerkampfwagen VPanther and had the ordnance inventory designation of Sd.Kfz. 171. On 27, February 1944, Hitler ordered that the Roman numeral V be deleted from the designation.

Jagdpanther

The Panther was a direct response to the Soviet T-34 and KV-1 tanks. First encountered on 23 June, 1941,the T-34 outclassed the existing Panzer III and IV.At the insistence of General Heinz Guderian, a special Panzerkommision was dispatched to the Eastern Front to assess the Russian tanks.Among the features of the Soviet tank considered most significant were the sloping armor, which gave much improved shot deflection and also increased the effective armor thickness against penetration, the wide track, which improved mobility over soft ground, and the 76.2 mm gun, which had good armor penetration and fired an effective high-explosive round. Daimler-Benz (DB) and Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg AG (MAN) were given the task of designing a new thirty to thirty-five-ton tank, designated VK30.02, by April 1942 .

Panther Tank T Shirt

The design was a direct homage to the T-34. It resembled the T-34 hull and turret form. DB’s design used a leaf spring suspension whereas the T-34 originally used coil springs. The DB turret was smaller than that of the MAN design and had a smaller turret ring which was the result of the narrower hull required by the leaf spring suspension. The main advantages of the leaf springs over a torsion bar suspension were a lower hull silhouette and a simpler shock dampening design. Like the T34, the DB design had a rear drive sprocket. Unlike the T-34, the DB design had a three-man turret crew: commander, gunner, and loader. But as the planned L/70 75mm gun was much longer and heavier than the T-34’s, mounting it in the Daimler-Benz turret was difficult. Plans to reduce the turret crew to two men to stem this problem were eventually dropped.

Panther Panzer WW2 German SS Division D-Day Rc tank pink

The MAN design embodied more conventional German ideals with the transmission and drive sprocket in the front and a turret placed centrally on the hull. It had a petrol engine and eight torsion-bar suspension axles per side. Because of the torsion bar suspension, the MAN Panther was higher and had a wider hull than the DB design. The slightly earlier, Henschel designed Tiger I heavy tank’s use of a “slack track” Christie style pattern of large road wheels with no return rollers for the upper run of track, and with the main road wheels being overlapping and interleaved in layout, were design concepts broadly repeated with the MAN design for the Panther.

Grossdeutschland Ww2 Panzer Tank Infantry Division Insignia Logo bk

The two designs were reviewed over a period from January 1942 through March 1942. Reichminister Todt, and later, his replacement Albert Speer, both recommended the DB design to Hitler because of its several advantages over the initial MAN design. However, at the final submission, MAN improved their design, having learned from the DB proposal, and a review by a special commission appointed by Hitler in May 1942 ended up selecting the MAN design. He then approved this decision after reviewing it overnight. One of the principal reasons given for this decision was that the MAN design used an existing turret designed by Rheinmetall-Borsig while the DB design would have required a brand new turret to be designed and produced, substantially delaying the commencement of production.

Hetzer Gonna Hetz WOT Panzerjager 38t SdKfz 138 tanks gray

The MAN design also had better ability to handle water hazards, easier gun maintenance and higher mobility due to better suspension, wider tracks, and a larger fuel tank. A mild steel prototype was produced by September 1942 and, after testing at , was accepted. It was put into immediate production. The start of production was delayed, however, mainly because there were too few specialized machine tools needed for the machining of the hull. Finished tanks were produced in December and suffered from reliability problems as a result of this production haste. The demand for this tank was so high that the manufacturing was soon expanded beyond MAN to include Daimler-Benz, Maschinenfabrik Niedersachsen-Hannover (MNH) and Henschel and Sohn in Kassel.

The initial production target was 250 tanks per month at MAN. This was increased to 600 per month in January 1943. Despite determined efforts, this figure was never reached due to disruption by Allied bombing, manufacturing bottlenecks, and other difficulties. Production in 1943 averaged 148 per month. In 1944, it averaged 315 a month (3,777 having been built that year), peaking with 380 in July and ending around the end of March 1945, with at least 6,000 built in total.

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I really like the U.S. Army intelligence report diagrams of the German armor that were captured during WW2. They have a cartoonish quality about them, but they are still very accurate. They remind me of the instructions of the plastic scale tank models that I used to build as a kid. I really loved the Monogram model kits with the Shepard Paine diorama instructions. The box had the pictures of Shep’s diorama on them and I would take the box tops and tape them on the walls in my room as they were real art to me. Here’s a link to his site with the diorama tip sheets: http://sheperdpaine.com/monogram/index.htm. Of course I still build models (dioramas) now as an adult. Some of the model kits that I built as a kid were some of the cheapest and worst detailed kits, but as a kid I loved them and built them as quick as possible. I have an old Aurora Panther tank in 1/48 scale that I think I will “speed build” the next time I sit down at my table…here’s a pic:

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I found this diagram of the Tiger 1, panzerkampfwagen 6, and decided to make a t shirt based on it. I think that it is the U.S. army intelligence manual on the Tiger that were captured from the Germans in World War 2. It has the dimensions of all the major components such as the armor thickness at the turret, the mantle, glacis plate, the 88mm gun, machine guns, etc. The diagram refers to the Tiger tank as a “Heavy Tank–PzKw 6”, not the Tiger as we all know it by. As always you can buy this shirt from my ebay store: Achtung T Shirt. Here’s a pic:

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Well I have finally finished the 88mm Flak Gun t shirt that I mentioned in the last post. I was very busy last week with multiple orders coming in from Australia and France. I had my favorite French tank lover, Jean-Luc, order 6 tee’s from me. I think he has ordered everything from the Stuka Ju-87 to the Jagdpanther tee and now he can get the 88mm Flak Gun tee. This new design is of course the “Dreaded 88” that the British so named during the Afika campaign. The design is a basic one and a good first entry into the stable of other German World War II weapons.

More about the “Dreaded 88” artillery flak gun:

The German forces employed the 88 extensively in World War II, not only in its original role as an anti-aircraft gun, where it performed well, but also as an anti-tank gun.

The German Condor Legion made extensive use of the FlaK 88 in the Spanish Civil War, where its usefulness as an anti-tank weapon and a general artillery piece exceeded its role as an anti-aircraft weapon. Erwin Rommel also used the 88 as an anti-tank weapon, first in France and later in North Africa. His timely use of the gun to blunt the British counterattack at Arras ended any hope of a breakout from the blitzkrieg encirclement of May 1940. In Libya and Egypt, he lured British tanks into traps by baiting them with apparently retreating panzers. When the British pursued, concealed 88s picked them off at ranges far beyond those of the 2-pdr and 6-pdr guns of the British tanks. The British 8th Army eventually learned to coordinate their heavy artillery with their ground advances, destroying the relatively immobile 88s in their emplacements once they revealed their positions.

The weapon saw continuous use on the Soviet Front. The appearance of the outstanding T-34 shocked the German tank crews, whose 37 mm and 50 mm tank guns could only penetrate the Soviet tank’s armour at extremely close range.

The less open terrain in Italy and Northern France was less suitable for the 88. The success of the 88 caused the Allies to take steps to defend against it in new tank design. Stopgap measures included adding more armour, or even using sandbags, to try to defeat the 88’s projectiles. The Germans took advantage of this effective design in the armament of vehicles such as the Tiger tank and the Elefant tank destroyer (with an 88 mm Pak 43/2 anti-tank gun).